Part 2 of building in public. [part 1 — on building a brand — is here.]
A recent night that pretty much sums up year 1
It was 8pm on a Tuesday and i was on the phone with my supplier, frantically running through paperwork with him to get our shipment out (we use a global logistics company). commercial invoice, packing list, the usual stack.
I was doing this with a very determined 3-year-old climbing me — she has a really firm grip — and refreshing my email every few minutes to see whether the shipment had moved.
It hadn't. Evidently, the documents we had submitted didn't include weights. Things were already packed. And the person on the supplier side who actually weighs cartons was on holiday. So we would have to unpack and weigh each piece by hand.
And yes, i was also simultaneously packing for our own week-long trip to Disneyland. It was Labor Day weekend, our daughter was about to turn 3, and we wanted to use the free under-3 tickets before that momentous birthday. (for the record, the trip went exceedingly well — she met Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Moana, and partying at Mickey's Clubhouse was the highlight of her trip.)
That, is one snapshot from my life - a mother and an aspiring businesswoman. A shipment stuck because of missing weights, on a Tuesday night, in between bedtime and packing for vacation.
Most important learnings
1. You need local boots on the ground — at least 1
Finding, establishing and maintaining supplier relationships requires constant touchpoints. In typical millennial fashion, I do most things on email. But understanding and operating around local limitations and customs is a huge part of the job, and for most things a phone call is what actually gets things moving. For the record, i found my expert on Upwork.
I have made multiple hires by now, and fired even more. She is the best hire i have made for the following reasons:
- Trust — she completes what she says she will do.
- Communication — she uses a google sheet to update me in real time.
- Not Defensive — when i am frustrated with lack of progress, often she is more frustrated than i am. That makes her my partner in crime, and it means i can truly count on her.
2. Work with mid-sized companies
Every company's needs are different, but for where we are right now, we have found mid-sized partners work best for us.
- too small and we end up solving their problems instead of focusing on our own.
- too big and we are a small fish to them. they treat you like a customer rather than a partner.
- established family businesses are just perfect. they are flexible enough to make quick samples and try new products, but experienced enough to guide us on shipping methods, product sizes & types that work, and realistic vs unrealistic timelines.
3. Outsource local storage and warehousing
This is an important 3rd lever that often makes or breaks import-export houses. We have consciously decided to outsource this to a large extent. We keep only overstock in our local HQ in SF, plus our top-priority samples — the ones we use for media and influencer seeding, and for small initial orders from Stockists.
For everything else, we use Amazon Logistics, for 1 simple reason: it is the most cost-efficient option for us.
(I hate the timelines though. 2 months for shipping and stocking, along with a mountain of paperwork, often means we are constantly scrambling. we are still pretty new — 1 year old — so predicting restock timelines is hard. Very much a WIP.)
The big challenge of year 1 (2025–2026): Tariffs
Tariffs went from 0 → 25 → 50 → 18%.
We sell handmade paper, which, at the end of the day, is a commodity. That means cost-based pricing. When costs change this drastically, the entire business model can go from profitable to untenable in a quarter. Add in the challenges of being new, and we have basically lost money on every sale.
So year 1 was loss-making - because we are still optimizing logistics and because of factors outside our control - namely TARIFFS!
As i said in my intro article, i gave myself a financial and time runway of 3 years. We have made drastic cuts and changes to our product pipeline to absorb this. So once again — work in progress.
This year's goal is to break even, and we are on track.
Next time...
I will talk about revenue: lines of business, what we are making, goals for 2026–2027, channels, and what our support systems look like.
Thank you for being along on this journey with us and see you again next time.
I f you find what I share here useful or you are curious to learn how to build something from scratch, come back next week (Monday 5pm PST) for another episode of "Stop what you are doing and listen to me right now"
Best,
Isha Sethi, PhD
Founder, Decoy Galleries
San Francisco, California
